Reason 10 : is it worth the upgrade?

Ever since Propellerhead announced the release for Reason 10, all the Reason users community has been in a debate of whether this should be considered a major upgrade or just a free upgrade for Reason 9 users. The reason being that they haven’t made any significant changes in the interface or the workflow features.

Reason 10- Propellerhead Announcement

Although they’ve added two new unique synthesizers (Europa and Grain), three sort-of “organic” or ethnic instruments (Klang, Pangea, and Humana) and a 3 GB of new Drum Loops and samples. They also included two of the most famous Rack Extensions (Radical Piano and Synchronous), some people believe that doesn’t seem to be enough. Especially after they’ve already introduced VST support in Reason 9.5.

Reason might seem a little lagging in some of the most common workflow features already found in all major DAWs such as Track groups, Multi-layered editing, Video Support and a lot of other features that most DAWs now have that speed up the workflow massively and help to organize big projects much easier. And Reason users (me included) seem to be disappointed that none of these feature requests have been addressed in this release.

Are the new devices a replacement for old ones?

Even though there’s a lot of similarities between Europa and Thor, Grain and Malstrom (or NN-XT), The new devices definitely add a lot to the Reason toolbox. I personally find them to be completely different and unique. They also open a whole new world of possibilities for Sound Design and Modulation ideas. It’s very clear from the live streams that Europa and Grain will change the “sound of Reason” from now on.

I’ve been using Reason since version 4 and ever since then I’ve fallen in love with it. Especially the way it looks and feels like a hardware or if I may say, an instrument. However, I’ve used many other DAWs like Ableton, Protools, and Presonus Studio One. I’ve always used Reason in Rewire mode whenever I’m trying to make my own sound. I am now on version 7, so for me, 129$ is definitely worth the upgrade. Given that they’ve added VST support and I’ll also have other new toys to play with.